The Economic Opportunities Program (EOP) of the Aspen Institute advances strategies (primarily in the areas of workforce development, microenterprise, community-based forestry, and access to capital and credit) that connect the poor and underemployed to the mainstream economy. The EOP...

Background and purpose. This thesis documents a program of five studies concerned with the assessment of software measurement. The goal of this program is to assist the software industry to improve the information support for managers, analysts and software engineers by providing evidence of...

The Chicago Fed and the Federal Reserve System have a longstanding interest in the causes and ramifications on unstable housing markets and high foreclosure rates, The Federal Reserve System helped to establish what is now known as NeighborWorks America, the umbrella organization for national...

Traditional theories of finance posit that the pricing of securities in financial markets should be done according to the quality of their underlying technical fundamentals. However, research on financial markets has tended to indicate that factors other than technical fundamentals are often...

Financial advisors are continually faced with the challenge of evaluating the quality of financial investments. Previous research has indicated that even among researchers of financial markets, diverse views exist about the meaning of risk and its relationship to returns. A survey study of 265...

In the summer of 2007, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago convened four focus groups to explore the connections between insurance, the process of wealth building and preservation, and financial access for low- and moderate-income consumers. This article examines the findings from those focus...

This article provides an overview of the potential market for Islamic finance and some of the challenges providers face in serving this unique market.

This article explores the demand for and the availability of financial products for Muslims who adhere to religious prohibitions against receiving and paying interest. This is an evolving area of consumer and small business finance, and the goal of this article is to provide an overview of the...